3rd (minor) parties in 2004: Any effect?

[zorkpolitics]

The press and most Democrats blame Nader for Gore losing in 2000.  But a look at the closest states for each candidate reveals Bush was hurt by conservative third parties (Libertarian and Reform) as much as Gore was hurt by Nader:

States Gore won by less than a conservative third party margin: a total of 29 Electoral Votes:
               Gore margin   Reform       Libertarian
New Mexico   366      1392           2058
Wisconsin       5708   11446      6640
Iowa            4144      5731      3209
Oregon           6765   7063      7447

States Bush won by less than the Green third party margin: also a total of 29 Electoral Votes:
                       Bush Margin   Green votes
Florida               537                 97488
New Hampshire       7211      22188

So in a close election every third party will have an impact!  For 2004 I expect the Greens to run someone (they are already on the ballot in 20 states), but agree that even with Nader they will probably get less than 1%.  The Reform party (on the ballot in only 7 states so far) will also do less well in 2004 without Buchanan, unless Perot returns, which he has alluded to in one interview.  I think the biggest vote getter for a third party is likely to be the Libertarian party, since some of the small government  conservatives will leave Bush to vote Libertarian vote (on the ballot in 27 states so far).   One interesting possibility is that Kucinich could run as the true progressive on the Natural Law party (so far on the ballot in 12 states), since the natural law founder John Haglin is a friend and strong supporter of Kucinich.

[zorkpolitics]

In 2000 exit polling asked:

If these were the only two presidential candidates, who would you vote for? (Bush got 49%, Gore 48%, and not voting 2%) Of those who picked Gore, 2% were Nader voters, of those who picked Bush, 1% were Nader voters, and about 1/3 of the not voting group were Nader voters.

So it looks like Gore would have gotten a net excess of about 20% of Nader votes, enough to clearly win FL (of course), but not NH or any other state.

However, if more votes from Nader would go to Gore than Bush, why did Bush get more votes in the exit poll than Gore? Because, strangely (amazingly?), if Nader was not running, 2% of the Gore voters said they would have voted for Bush!

See MSNBC for additional polling results:
http://www.msnbc.com/m/d2k/g/polls.asp?office=P&state=N1